Hyper Realism with Colored Pencils

Colored pencils, a medium of fine art. This one really twisted my brain. I came across this technique browsing through art videos on Youtube. The final product was often called hyper realism and to be honest seemed unachievable. But as usual, where someone says “You can’t …” I have to give it a shot anyway.

Lost and Found Pencil Box

Some time in school, I don’t remember exactly, me or my brother made a wooden box in class. Since the beginning of its time it has always held my most random assortment of pencils. That was a long time ago. I have moved at least 15 times to four different countries and thrown out a lot of unnecessary baggage in the process. But the pencil box prevailed.

Anyway, since I already had a whole box full of colored pencils and some paper lying around, I got comfortable on the couch and started drawing. At that point it was quite random to pick the movie poster of American Psycho – which is a fantastic piece of art itself btw. Later however it should become a theme connected to my background in psychology.

The Gallery of Psychos

Hyper realism plays and important part for the message. You might have noticed how mental disorders raise more and more awareness these days. In TV we even go so far as to make them seem cool, in real life we like to blame inexplicable violence and immoral behavior on them, and very quickly so. Truth is, we don’t even begin to comprehend what mental disorders are. Psychology is just a hundred years old and scientific findings don’t explain all too much at this point. Though it does know of normality and abnormality; what is normal and what we think is normal. And it unravels fear, especially for things we don’t understand.

The purpose of a hyper realistic portrait of a psycho is to shine light on it. It’s supposed to make us see the disorder – in HD. And here comes the amazing part about it: When I tell people that this is done in colored pencils, they look closer. The artwork is extreme. Just as a mental disorder is some extreme version of our psyche as we know it. Interestingly, when I talk about that, you want to step away, argue against it. Only now, you can’t really look away anymore.

American Psycho, colored pencil, 46x62cm

Kanye loves Kanye, colored pencil, 46x62cm

OldBoy, colored pencil, 46x62cm

A Closer Look

It has become important to me what I make you look at. I don’t want to distract you or lead you into a pleasant fantasy. I want to show you what is going on around me, as I see it. With this project I want to bring the viewer closer to the “crazy” within themselves. I want to share the first and most important lesson in my psychology training: Everything we are is dimensional and everyone there is exists somewhere on those same dimensions. “Normal” only means “most people”.